"Paris, 21 July 2016 — Once again. The State of Emergency in France has been extended until January. In reaction to violence shaking the country and with the presidential election of 2017 only a few months away, political leaders are indulging an ignominious orgy of security-driven policy. Not satisfied with merely prolonging the state of emergency, lawmakers have also amended the 2015 Intelligence Act passed last year to legalize domestic mass surveillance. (...) Then, again according to Le Monde, during the previous National Council of Intelligence last January, the decision was taken to "put under surveillance all the communication data of the 11 700 persons with a S-File linked with radical islamism". Until now, this form of surveillance targeted only individuals who had been "identified as a [terrorist] threat". But now, in accordance with this amendment, the code of national security stipulates that an individual has to merely be identified as "potentially related to a threat" or to belong to "the entourage" of individuals "potentially related to a threat", to have his or her metadata analysed in real time, and for four months, by intelligence services." Source: La Quadrature du Net https://www.laquadrature.net/en/french-state-of-emergency-overbidding-mass-s...